


Do Mirrored Images dream of Reflected Sheep?

by Anonymous



Series: Toonkind D&D Fics [3]
Category: The First Drafthouse (Toonkind D&D)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Coraline (2009) Fusion, Angst, Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Found Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, Snippets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:55:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27242302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Just a bunch of snippets I wrote for the Toonkind Coraline AU!
Series: Toonkind D&D Fics [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1989043
Kudos: 1
Collections: Anonymous





	Do Mirrored Images dream of Reflected Sheep?

**Snippet 1: The Beldam’s mistake**

The others were made to entertain them, but the other engineer and Jack were created to love them the way the former’s original self did and the latter’s original self couldn’t do so freely.

And they might have just been copies, strange reflections of real people- but they loved Shorts Kid so, so much. Enough to hurt for it. Enough to try for them. The other mother didn’t recognize love in her creations. Maybe that was her mistake.

* * *

**Snippet 2: Seven Stages**

Don’t try and imagine grieving for people who were never real. Don’t try and imagine Shorts Kid clinging to the Engineer, the real one, and loving him- but also waking up at night crying, because in a way they lost a dad. Maybe he wasn’t real, but love could do a lot of things in this world. Maybe it made the Other Engineer real.

Don’t imagine Shorts Kid stealing Lucky Jack’s candy, the taffy sticking to their fingers, and remembering an obnoxious reflection they had found off putting. The Other Jack had been fake, until he wasn’t. Don’t imagine Shorts Kid remembering how it felt to walk up to the house and see a blue and yellow coat flapping in the wind.

Don't try to think about Shorts Kid not being able to sleep. About them crawling out of their bed and onto the rafters, because from here they can see the whole studio, and they can see the gritty reality of it- no other mother to twist their vision, no rose colored buttons stitched over their eyes. Don't think about them rolling sweets on the palms of her hands and trying not to cry. Don't think about them falling asleep on the rafters. Don't think about who finds them there. Don't think about them facing Jack, still half asleep, and feeling so relieved and gutted at the same time when they see his coat is still the same shade of brown.

* * *

**Snippet 3: If you love something enough**

The Other Engineer is soft around the edges, and always has time for Shorts Kid- the warmth of their feathers seep into Shorts Kid’s skin whenever they go in for a hug. They don’t want him to replace the real Engineer- but they see nothing wrong with growing to love the Other Engineer back. 

(The Other Mother holds her buttons up. The Other Mother smiles, a crooked thing that splits her face into jagged halves.  _ Love is held in the buttons _ , she giggles at the Other Engineer. He thinks of Shorts Kid’s trusting smile, the ease with which their hand slipped into his, and he looks away. He cups a hand over one button and looks away. What is love to the fake? What makes someone real? Shorts Kid thinks he’s a real person, even if not the real Engineer. Maybe that will be enough.)

(He trades knowing looks with the Other Jack over Shorts Kid’s shoulders, and he already knows what he’s willing to do.)

When Shorts Kid arrives in the world next, the Other Engineer doesn’t greet them. The Other Jack is absent. They seek him out, and he tells them to leave, through swollen feathers darkening to the color of ash. Love might be stored in the buttons, but so is The Other Mother’s influence.

What makes someone real? The love they’re given by others, willingly, with no need to take and steal?

Or is it the grief that Shorts Kid will eventually feel?

* * *

**Snippet 4: Do Mirrored images dream of Reflected sheep?**

The thing is, Shorts Kid isn’t the kind of child who would be drawn in by promises of a family who would bow to their every whim. They already have a family, and no matter what happens, Shorts Kid loves them. And we all know how much the Other Mother despises love.

But maybe that’s what draws them in in the end. Not the idea of replacing their family, but perhaps the idea of finding another one. This is a child who knows other dimensions and worlds exist. Shorts Kid doesn’t hesitate when they see that door. They go right on through.

When they meet Jack, (the Other Jack, the one with red buttoned eyes and velvet fur, who gives them candy freely, who lets them climb into their arms whenever they want) they love him. Other Jack isn’t  _ their _ Jack, and they know that, but it doesn’t stop them from loving him. 

Maybe it saves them in the end, because the Other Mother had never thought of looking for love in her own creations. Other Jack had been made to like Shorts Kid. And it’s easy to like them, when they curl up in their arms and grin with all their teeth. It’s easier still to  _ love _ them when they look up at him with sincere eyes and tell him that he doesn’t have to be Jack to be their friend.

Other Jack trades knowing glances with the Other Engineer over Short’s kid’s tiny shoulders. Shorts Kids run their hand through his fur, and he wonders. He was made to care for Shorts Kid so The Other Mother did not have to. He weighs the weight of this child’s happiness against his own safety and existence, and he prays that it will be enough to steel his resolve. (It is. He will not survive the inevitable confrontation, but his will does not waver once.)

Shorts Kid will never know what happened to the Other Jack. Perhaps this is a blessing- they’ll never see him contort into a nightmarish shape hellbent on hunting them down like they will the Other Engineer. 

Perhaps. But watching a familiar coat flap in the wind, it doesn’t feel like a blessing at all.

* * *

**Snippet 5: The Happy Ending**

He goes by Other Jack, at least at first. His real self doesn’t take kindly to it, but he has no other name to give, no other title to go by. He lets Shorts Kid guide him around the studio and he wonders what kind of life he’s been given. His other self looks at him with distrustful eyes.

He smiles. He laughs. He learns the limits of his body, without the Bedlam’s magic sustaining it. He learns to remind himself to eat and drink. He learns to love others besides Shorts Kid. He learns to like the taste of cake. He learns what nightmares are. He learns that button eyes can’t cry.

He learns how it feels to tear a seam. He learns how it feels to fall apart. He grits his teeth and claps a hand over leaked stuffing, and he learns that he needs to take up sewing.

—-

(He asks for a needle and thread and some buttons, the most colorful ones he can find, as divorced from the Bedlam’s soulless black and his dull red as he can make it. He has no magic, so he pulls at his stitches by hand, fingers scrabbling at the borders of his eyes. Just a few weeks ago, the Bedlam’s hooked claws had dug into his eyes to try and gouge them out. Now here he is trying to do the same thing.)

(He pauses. Breathes. Better temporarily blind than permanently dead, he tells himself. Better the prickling pain of exchanging a pair of eyes for another than worrying about being used, he repeats, and if his hand shakes while doing so, if the stitches are sloppy- well. No one will ever examine him closely enough to notice.)

—-

Everything is so overwhelming. He’s used to his world only being as big as the Bedlam had needed it to be, and this world is decidedly not. He sticks to Shorts Kid’s side and doesn’t leave for days. He picks out melted candy bars from his sleeves, the last of his magic leaving him. He doesn’t let himself mourn the loss. 

When everything gets to be too much, he seeks out the rafters, where he can just clear his head and breathe.

Sometimes he sees Lucky Jack in the distance, a flash of red against a green screen. A rabbit with a cocky smirk and a penchant for mischief. Him, except not, and his hands tighten, leaving gouges in wood. He watches them stick their tongue out at Shorts Kid, and he wonders.

(They’d told him that he didn’t have to be Other Jack to be their friend. They’d been made to like Shorts Kid, to care for them- but that was the moment they had first begun to wonder if the Other Mother cared as well. 

She hadn’t. He’d made his choices and burnt his bridges, and he’d gone to confront her fully expecting to die for it. He hadn’t, but the moment still features in dozens of nightmares, of him dying or ceasing to be, of Shorts Kid with buttoned eyes and an empty smile.

Lucky Jack never had to meet the Beldam. Lucky Jack might love Shorts Kid, but if they do, he can’t tell. Lucky Jack has probably never touched a needle or thread in their life, nor have rainbow stitches running down the inside of their arms. Lucky Jack is so very different from the counterpart the Beldam had fashioned, and a part of him can’t understand why.

But then again- here in the rafters, his fingers picking at the sleeves of his new coat (the one Shorts Kid gave him, the one they’d gotten themself)- they’re not Other Jack anymore either, are they? They’re something entirely new, and-

Shorts Kid had told him they loved him. He closes his eyes and hopes that that will be enough.

—-

(The next time he and Shorts Kid go out together, he introduces himself as Otto.)

* * *

**Snippet 6: The Blue Shirt**

When Shorts Kid met the Other Primrose they saved her, even if they didn't quite know it yet. Because the Other Primrose was lonely and confused and isolated, didn't quite know how to be an individual instead of just another mirror image in the Other Mother's world, a single person instead of being a part of a set. When Shorts Kid asked her what made her happy, Other Primrose didn't answer immediately. She had to think. She had to look at Shorts Kid's toothed grin, the orange bandaid curled around one cheek, the blue of their shirt, for minutes- and then she had blurted out desires she didn't even know she had, twisted echoes of want. 

She told Shorts Kid that she liked blue, and that she liked hugs, and that she liked their shirt. The words were treason enough on their own. But Shorts Kid just clapped their hands and offered to get her a matching shirt, and the Other Primrose didn't care.

The next time they met, Shorts Kid had six new bandaids on their fingers, every colour of the rainbow imaginable- and a blue shirt clutched between their hands. When the Other Primrose reached forward to accept it, all she could see was the little details: the pink band wrapped around Shorts Kid's thumb, the neat little stitches on the inside of the shirt's hem. Her buttoned eyes throbbed. No one had ever given her a gift before.

The shirt was three sizes too big. The ruffles swallowed her wrists entirely. Other Tobias and Mersel kept looking at her strangely, at the wrinkled fabric that clashed with her fur and the monochrome world around them.

She never took it off.


End file.
